Napoleon Crossing the Alps (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We all watched and maybe even loved stories of great heroes – kings, queens, generals – leading their armies to victory or glorious defeat. Each country or culture has its own such historical names that may have existed or not, and there are international names acknowledged and respected internationally. Nevertheless, we know about Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon and so on to name some less politically controversial names, but what do we know about all the nameless foot-soldiers that fought in the first lines?
This post will be dedicated to these people and their portrayal in literature and in media, more or less contemporary. (more…)
Well… I was walking near one of the canals in Tottenham Hale towards the twilight (not that twilight, ugh, I can’t even use this word without sparkly cheesy connotations any more, bless you whatever-is-your-name-woman-who-invented-sparkly-vampires-sensitive-to-the-humans’-emotions) and it just felt … umm… like poetry.
If you watched the video before reading this post, then, very good, if you didn’t please watch it. It’s basically a poem by Mihai Eminescu, something of a lullaby, but also describing nature going to sleep. I won’t go into interpretations (just search for “Somnoroase pasarele” – if you know Romanian – or “Drowsy birds” could be its English translation: find the poem here, in Romanian, English, Hungarian, Modern and Ancient Chinese). Here are the lyrics as translated in English (from that site – the version which is really nice, not the other one, *cough* Sleepy Birds… But it still can’t catch the nuances that it does in the Romanian language, it’s maybe why they say poetry can’t really be translated, it can be at most re-written, but its form and rhythm are built within the music of certain language and that language alone):
Well, anyway… While I was walking along the water – and feeling guilty that I forgot to take some treats with me again and all the birds were looking at me quite irritated – I felt like singing this song (because it was made a song by George Popescu) while I was watching everything natural and human going to sleep. At times like this I really wish I were a poet, but for some reason I can’t find words (that is poetic words that can describe an image or another), it feels really difficult to give shape to feelings – especially if they’re complex and include a whole pantheon of elements.
Well, I was thinking that Eminescu must have taken a walk like me, some 200 years ago. The only difference? He wrote a poem, which was given music, and which is now a part of the Romanian heritage. What did I do? A blog post. A conventional blog post, with a YouTube video link. It’s not that I want to point at myself and say “Sinner, heathen, stupid, whatever”… It’s just that I wish I could write a poem as simple and beautiful as that. Plus, if in the 1880s, if there had been such a thing as blogging, I guess he’d be blogging too. And most likely not the poems and nice stuff, but normal, opinionated, perhaps even politically incorrect posts.
But don’t let me destroy the dreamy feeling I have with silly assumptions. I’ll leave you with the drowsy birds and bid you a very good, peaceful night!
For about half a century, Londoners were given the possibility to get a week’s worth of entertainment for only one dime. This was The Penny Illustrated Paper. Born in 1861 after the Repeal of Paper Duties act, and with slight name changes – but nothing important enough to alter its identity, it was one the first English papers ever to spread to citywide readers.
Seemingly, it was a close relative with The Illustrated Times, but nothing is certain, at least at the moment. Anyway, it eventually forged with the Illustrated London News and became a part of The Illustrated Times until 1913 when it – sadly – met its demise.
The Penny Illustrated Paper was nothing more and nothing less than a marketplace gazette. As the readers were not necessarily intellectuals – in fact they might have ranged from workers and shopkeepers to maids and such – the subjects touched were not exactly the most pretentious, at least not at the surface. In any case, the quality of the articles and illustrations is surprisingly good considering the low status illustrated press – and press in general – had in Victorian times , suggesting that their sources were anything but a group of dilettantes talking, writing and drawing jibberish.
There is no surprise that Penny’s purpose was less to inform, in fact, it was created to entertain its readers. Its cartoons and comics avant la lettre remind their viewers of the carnivalesque with its subsequent chaos and hullabaloo. Nevertheless, the characters are not necessarily distorted, but the situations depicted surely are at least (apparently) peculiar. However, the fact that its demographics are so much wider than any other contemporary or older illustrated papers’ it gives today’s observers a much more authentic image of what life really was like for the most part of Victorian Londoners.
Evidently, pantomimes did not just happen. Hundreds of people were involved in the preparations (actors, costume designers, stage technicians, casting, etc.), propagation of the news and other such activities now catalogued as PR. Fairies would not put their wings by the slap of Harlequin’s wand. It is actually “rubbing the gilt off our gingerbread with a vengeance” (issue 784, 25 Dec. 1875). Just imagine you are a Victorian child and have already celebrated Christmas with your family, perhaps Father Christmas or his friends even brought you presents. You are anxiously waiting for the Pantomime. What if you could sneak in the theatres – on Christmas Day, let’s say – what would you see?
The PIP illustration-reporter, this time Mr. Friston with his “cunning pencil” (issue 784, 25 Dec. 1875), always on the job, and always on the right place took a sneak preview at a pantomime dress rehearsal at the Theatre Royal Dazzle (fig. ). Seemingly, the whole pre-performance period is quite an anxious one, especially for all the cast and crew, now busy with the final retouches:
It is clearly an anxious time for all – anxious for the Queen Fairy (Miss Sugarplum) and her attendant sylphs, though they do take matters so coolly; anxious for Billy Button, engaged from the provinces and desirous to make a hit as Prince Folderol; anxious for the young scene painter waiting to see whether the drop-scene on which he has lavished all his skill will make his fame; anxious for clown and pantaloon, harlequin and columbine; anxious for the unobtrusive author; anxious, very anxious, for the stage-manager; most anxious of all for the lessee, who has risked his thousands of the venture, sparing no expense, no pains to make his pantomime worthy a triumphant success. Action is moderate: airs and graces are reserved for Boxing Night. Dialogue is mumbled. Mr. Prompter only requires them to be word-perfect in their parts.
[…]When the clown rushes on with a quiet “Here we are again!” and there is only dead silence to greet the facetious one, your Playgoer finds it is high time to be going, for it would never do to detract from the novelty of the “comic business” by describing, however briefly, the deliberate rehearsal of those practical and apparently impromptu jokes which are to set the house in a roar next Monday night. (issue 784, 25 Dec. 1875)
